Entertainment

eCRUSH, eSPIN-the-Bottle Acquired

eCRUSH, the teen social network, has been acquired by Hearst Magazines for an undisclosed sum, it's being announced today. Chicago-based eCRUSH launched in February 1999 as an anonymous matching service - they've since matched over 900,000 people, they say, with over 2,400,000 users registered so far. The site actually has a fairly smart model for viral growth - users create a list of people they have crushes on, and the site emails all those people to ask them for a list of their crushes. If there's a match, eCRUSH connects them. In many ways, this is similar to the address book import that many social networks promote, but slightly less spammy.

The eCRUSH network includes another site that should be familiar if you've ever visited a MySpace layouts site (they advertise heavily to this generation): eSPIN-the-Bottle is an online version of the high school game with over 1 million active users. The third eCRUSH property is High School Style Board, a photo-rating site.

It's pretty clear why Hearst has bought these sites: they appeal to teen girls, the target demographic of Hearst's magazines CosmoGIRL, Seventeen and Teenmag. In February, they plan to relaunch the websites for all these magazines with photos, video and podcasts - essentially, social networking and media sharing. Also look out for the official launch of MyPromShopper, which lets teens plan their prom and post notebooks and quizzes to MySpace, Facebook, Piczo, hi5 and blogs.

As we've mentioned before, magazine publishers are realizing that print editions have been usurped by social networks and blogs. Just as Condé Nast is trying to retain that audience through projects like Flip.com, Hearst must be realizing that it needs to follow the audience.

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